Fringe Benefits

As a small child, you wore those moon boots from your Halloween costume to school everyday. When you were a teenager, your parents begged you to make good grades and don a wardrobe like the mannequins at The Gap. Instead, you started pulling Ds in your best subjects and wearing mail-carrier pants and top hats. You looked ridiculous and, sadly, you were ridiculed. But you stuck to your bizarro guns and made it to adulthood, a place where you can be as strange as you want to be -- assuming you hang at the right places.

Here’s one for you: Space 55 Theatre, which hosts the Phoenix Fringe Festival. The freak fest celebrates the weirdos of theater with 13 wacked-out original works that hop out of the mainstream and off the deep end. Various local theater companies, such as Theatre in My Basement and Vessel, are scheduled to participate.